Profiles in courage: young black woman reports "noose" in dorm

Run away, it's a macro-aggression! (And I'm fit to be tied)

Fortunately, she was able to retreat to a safe space and cuddle a puppy until police identified the scary object as a misplaced shoelace.

The president of Michigan State University, Lou Anna Simon, rapidly released a statement denouncing nooses and describing the shoelace hanging on a dorm door in Holden Hall as “a racial incident.”

“A student reported a noose was hung outside of her room,” Simon’s statement said. “I want to recognize the courage it took for the student to report this incident.”

“This type of behavior is not tolerated on our campus,” [Simon] also said. “No Spartan should ever feel targeted based on their race, or other ways in which they identify. A noose is a symbol of intimidation and threat that has a horrendous history in America.”

By Wednesday afternoon, campus police managed to locate a shoelace which matched the “noose.” The police found it outside the dormitory.

The campus cops even managed to track down the student who had lost the shoelaces.

A Michigan State spokesman, Jason Cody, then suggested that the shoelaces were somehow specially packaged to look like “a noose.”

“The matching packaged leather shoelace was found outside of the residence hall,” Cody said in an updated statement. “Officers located and spoke to the student who lost both of the shoelaces, which are packaged in a way that someone could perceive them to look similar to a noose.”

The student who lost the shoelaces lives on the same floor as the student who called in the noose threat.

“Also, the original shoelace found inside the residence hall was not directed at any individual,” Cody said reassuringly. “It originally was seen on hallway floor and later on a stairwell door handle, where officers believe someone put it after picking it up.”

The fact that a single taxpayer dollar is being spent on this Amazon pitch makes the blood boil

"The remains of Father Panik village, one of the most famous drug spots in the Northeastern United States. The housing project was torn down and its residents relocated in an attempt to stop drug traffic. In the mid-1990s"

Connecticut state and municipal employees are collaborating to pitch for Amazon's new headquarters. Proposed cities: Hartford, Danbury, Bridgeport (!) and Stamford.

Not a single one of those cities, or Connecticut itself, for that matter, is in the running, or ever will be, and the politicians involved know that. Better they send those assigned to the task of drawing up such futile campaigns to picking up litter off the streets — we'd be getting something for the money, at least.

Do you really want a "smart house"?

That wasn't my Swanson Dinner!

From FWIW's Home Monitor correspondent, this:

Voice from baby monitor suggests that mother "suck my dick".

This is the chilling moment a woman realized her web camera was spying on her when it turned to look at her and said, “Bonjour, madame.”

Several warnings have been issued on internet-connected cameras that can be remotely hacked by pervs and used to spy on people.

Now one woman in the Netherlands has learned just how intrusive these gadgets can be ....

Rilana Hamer, who recently graduated from college and works at a financial services firm, thought the webcam would be a good way to keep an eye on her puppy while she was at work.

But it turned out she was the one being monitored.

Hamer was with a pal [sic] when she noticed the rotating camera swivel to look at her from across the room.

“I moved to the left and right and the camera came with me.”

Hamer whipped out her smartphone to film it, and the chilling clip she recorded appears to show a mumbled voice having a conversation with a terrified Hamer, who screams, “Get out of my house.”

It continues to swivel, before uttering “Suck my d—.”

“My privacy, my house, my personal stuff and myself… I’m scared.. terrified,” wrote Hamer.

“I’m being watched, but for how long? What did that person see from me?”

Hundreds of thousands of unsecured personal cameras are available to watch online, in real time, thanks to sick websites that allow voyeurs to snoop on the general public.

The websites allow pervy peepers to peer through thousands of cameras placed in British car parks, offices and communal corridors as well as bedrooms and waiting rooms around the world.

The problem is so widespread, even Mark Zuckerberg and Pope Francis have placed stickers over their smartphone cameras to stop someone watching them.

All this "Internet of Things" stuff comes with a problem: the manufacturers of "smart" refrigerators, TV's, sex toys, whatever, have no security against hackers whatsoever, and certainly no way to download new programming to combat hackers when they're discovered. Got one of those "Next" thermostats? Prepare to find your pipes frozen and your house's temperature set at zero degrees when you return from St. Barts (oops! No more St.Barts; the Seychelles, perhaps). Whatever you do, don't keep a computer on when you and the tennis pro are  training in the bedroom.

It took 4 1/2 years and three brokers, but these owners finally found someone to overpay for their Conyers Farm house

50 Guards Road has sold for $4.5 million. It started at $8, back in 2013; owners paid $5.750 in 2000 (and before that, it sold for $5.2 in 1998 — $7.83 in current dollars).

Add a Chick-Fil—A, a Whole Foods, and a gas station, and Conyers might be viable yet. For now, it's the new Sherwood Farms.

Should sheer stupidity and historical ignorance warrant execution? Probably not, but there's certainly no reason to listen to this idiot.

Kenyon Martin, Minister of Cultural Appropriation 

Basketball player Kenyon Martin calls out Jeremy Lin for "cultural appropriation" because of Lin's wearing dreadlocks. Lin points out that Martin has Chinese characters tattooed on his arm.

I have no idea what part of Africa the partially-white Mr. Kenyon's black ancestors may have come from, but I doubt they were Egyptian, a different culture, and certainly he's not Indian, Greek, Minoan, Roman, or Celtic, all cultures whose members wore dreadlocks long before African-Americans appropriated the style in the 70s.

Kenyon, by the way, made millions by playing basketball, a game invented by a white man in Springfield, Massachusetts, and published his complaint against Lin via cellphone, a device very much not invented by an African.

Not that he shows any ability or inclination to read, but here's a brief article one of Kenyon's friends might read to him:

The history of dreadlocks is varied and differs depending on who you ask. This, then, is a summary and compilation of all the different accounts we have been able to locate.

One account claims that dreadlocks originated in India (unlike most who cite Egypt as their birth place) with the dreadlocked diety Shiva and his followers. It is likelythat this is the spirituality origin of dreadlocks in Indian culture. However, the first archeological proof of people wearing dreadlocks came from Egypt where mummies have been recovered with their dreadlocks still in tact.

Regardless of their origin, dreadlocks have been worn by nearly every culture at some point in time or another. Roman accounts stated that the Celts wore their hair ‘like snakes’. The Germanic tribes and Vikings were also known to wear their hair in dreadlocks. Dreadlocks have been worn by the monks of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Nazarites of Judiasm, Qalandri’s Sufi’s, the Sadhu’s of Hinduism, and the Dervishes of Islam, and many more! 

Harvey channels Hillary: "Vast, right-wing conspiracy" out to get the famed Democrat fund raiser. Er, that would be The New York Times. Really?

Weinstein discovers a starlet, but he's lured into sin by the little vixon and her co-conspirators

Give Harvey this: when the conspiracy to "get him" includes the NYT and the New Yorker, that is indeed vast. So vast, it encompasses the entire world (except Hollywood and the Democratic Party).

And that conspiracy includes liberal activist Ashley Judd:

Judd went on the record that 20 years ago, Weinstein invited her to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what Judd thought would be a professional breakfast meeting.

Judd said she was shocked when Weinstein sent her up to his room instead. Judd said Weinstein appeared in a bathrobe, offered her a massage, and asked her if she wanted to watch him take a shower. 

Judd said she remembered thinking: “How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” 

In 2015, Judd told the story to Variety without revealing the name of the person: 

"I was sexually harassed by one of our industry’s most famous, admired-slash-rivaled bosses ... He was very stealth and expert about it. He groomed me, which is a technical term – Oh, come meet at the hotel for something to eat. Fine, I show up. Oh, he’s actually in his room. I’m like, Are you kidding me? I just worked all night. I'm just going to order cereal. It went on in these stages. It was so disgusting. He physically lured me by saying, 'Oh, help me pick out what I’m going to wear.' There was a lot that happened between the point of entry and the bargaining. There was this whole process of bargaining—'Come do this, come do this, come do this.' And I would say, 'No, no, no.'"

In an exclusive interview with FWIW, Ms. Clinton defended one of her largest [sic] fund raiser and bundler: 

"Harvey has it exactly right,", said Clinton. "It's just what happened to Bill, when that bit of trailer trash was put up by Reagan and Eisenhower and Kennedy — yes, even Kennedy — to claim she'd been raped, and that Lewinski cunt came out with her blow job story. Lies, all lies. Lies, I tell you! And when I win back the presidency the ws stolen from me, I sure as hell am going to be doing something about it.

"Harvey and Bill weren't demeaning women, they were empowering them! They're both hard men, yes, but sometimes it takes a hard man to make a tender chicken realize her potential, and recognize the opportunity being offered them.

"No, she added, I'm not returning Harvey's contributions, because he's a champion pf women's rights, like I am, and I know he'd want it that way: so do I."

Good money after bad, but eventually, they found a buyer

Discounted Tara

The owners of 37 Calhoun Drive put their house up for sale in 2010 at $10.950 but found no takers, so they pulled it, renovated and expanded it, and then rather foolishly priced it at $11.950 in 2012. I say "foolishly", because if no one wanted it at $10.950, the owners would have been better off cutting the price rather than sinking more money into it and then attempting to recoup what they'd spent.

That lesson must have eventually sunk in because today, five years later and priced at $5.995, it reports a contract.

I don't want to sound full of myself, but it does frustrate me, a little, to see certain well-known agents keep wildly-overpricing their listings and yet keep landing new ones. Do owners really not check track records? 

(In fact, I do know the answer, and it's a phenomenon that's as old as real estate itself: an owner will call in 3-4 agents for a price opinion, 3 of the agents will come in with prices very close to each other, the 4th will "buy the listing" with a completely unrealistic, inflated price, and the owner goes with her. The house will still sell for market value, but for a year or two, the owner has the pleasurable experience of living in dreamland.)

Another NFL-free evening

I

The Patriots, my former favorite football team, will be playing tonight, and I won't be watching. In fact, until I see every player in the NFL kneeling on the sidelines in sackcloth and ashes, I won't watch a single game this year, and probably forever.

And the victims of this serial sexual predator will probably join the NRA to protect themselves

Ooooh, you big, strong man, you! is that your wallet I feel?

Hillary fund raiser harvey Weinstein admits he was (is?) an abusive sex fiend, will take a leave of absence to focus on the NRA and Donald Trump.

I wonder how many under-aged starlets wished they'd had a pistol to fend him off? 

His excuse: "I grew up in 60s and 70s, when mores were different" cuts no ice with me: that was my era too, and I certainly knew right from wrong — Weinstein's piggish, abusive behavior was as wrong then as it is now. Further, the NYT article busting him only traced back his behavior to 1990; in other words, well beyond his formative years. It seems he's claiming to have been  quick learner in the 60s, and a slower learner the past three decades. Uh huh.

Not only does the arrogant Weinstein not realize what an ass he is, count on the Democrats who've sucked his teats all these years to applaud him for his "wokefulness".

And there's still a weak market up on Pecksland

124 Pecksland Road, which sold for $3.495 million in 2006,tool another price cut today, to $2.295. 667 days on market.

It's an attractive house, at this price, but it's on 1.25 of an acre in the R-2 zone, so expansion is limited, if permitted at all (I haven't done the calculation), and it's in the Glenville/western school district, which can make for a slow sale.

All that said, $2 million (or so) seems pretty reasonable.